Business: New Farm at JFK Airport

On Thursday, October 8th, JetBlue revealed a new project they had been working on at the JFK International Airport: a farm. Located at Terminal 5 (and appropriately named the T5 Farm), the farm will grow over 2,000 pounds of blue potatoes per year and contains over 1,000 different vegetables and herbs such as beets, mint, sage, and rosemary. The farm is 24,000 square feet and consists of 2,300 black plastic milk crates bolted together and then bolted to the ground. The harvests will be used for restaurants at T5 and some will be sent elsewhere. Some of the soil used to plant the crops was compost from restaurants at T5 – leftover food is often sent to a farm in New York for it to be composted, and some of that soil was sent back to use for the farm. JetBlue will use some of the potatoes for its signature “Terra Blues” potato chips. JetBlue created the farm in collaboration with GrowNYC, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and Terra Real Vegetables. Marcel VanOoyen, the executive director of GrowNYC, said that the farm “is a chance to really dig in and get to know [the earth].”